E-mail allows persons (or even automatic robotics machines) to quickly and easily electronically send textual messages and other information such as, for example, a collection of pictures, sound recordings, and formatted documents to other e-mail users anywhere in the world. Anything that can be accessed as a file e.g., in hard disk folders or in network shared folders, can be included in an e-mail attachment. E-mail attachments can be images, documents, spread sheets, mp3 files, programs, and the likes. Once files are attached to an e-mail, the e-mail as well as the attached files can be transmitted over a communications network (e.g., the Internet) to other computer systems. A recipient user or other users accessing an attached file can detach the file to a local system storage for further processing.
A serious risk associated with the exchange of electronic information on open and unsecured networks, particularly on the Internet, is that an impostor could intercept an electronic communication, or access some of the information, such as an e-mail, and masquerade himself as the authorized recipient of said electronic communication.
It is often needed to deliver an electronic document to the intended recipient and then to make sure that the intended recipient, and not a different person, has indeed received the document. Likewise, it is often desirable to deliver an electronic document to the intended recipient and then to receive a confirmation that the intended recipient, after having received the document, has indeed opened and reviewed the content of the document.
Securing the delivery of documents to the intended recipients by verifying and confirming receipt of such delivered documents by the intended recipients may be needed, for example, in various legal or safety related applications. Furthermore, in such kind of applications, it is generally desirable that the recipient cannot easily repudiate receiving or viewing the document.
Previous approaches for securing the delivery to the intended and authorized recipients of electronic documents and files e.g., attached to e-mails, and obtaining receipt confirmations by the intended recipients, present some drawbacks. A first limitation is that generally the delivery confirmation can not positively demonstrate that the recipient actually has viewed, read or was otherwise made aware of the content of the received document. For example, according to the prior art methods based on providing a recipient private information, or digitally signing a confirmation message, the intended recipient may later repudiate the confirmation and assert that he or she did not send the confirmation. For example, the intended recipient may claim that the private information, such as a password, must have been compromised and was provided by another recipient. Also, an e-mail sender can receive an automatic confirmation that the e-mail has been successfully delivered to the recipient's e-mail server and that the e-mail has been opened, but there is not a verification and confirmation that the person who accesses and opens files attached to the e-mail is in fact the intended authorized recipient; moreover, there is not any confirmation about document opening i.e., if the recipient, being either the intended authorized recipient or another person, has in fact opened or read the files or documents attached by the sender to the delivered e-mail. In such a situation, the intended recipient may confirm that the e-mail has been received, but later deny that they actually were aware of the entire content of the e-mail and/or the content of the e-mail attached files.
While most of the modern e-mail systems enable to configure an e-mail to transmit a message to the sender confirming the reception and opening of the e-mail by the recipient (supposedly, by the intended recipient), there is no equivalent mechanism informing the sender that a file attached to an e-mail has been opened by the recipient. Moreover, there is no mechanism provided to assure and confirm to the sender of an e-mail that all files attached to the e-mail, even after being detached and saved for future processing, have been opened and accessed by the authorized intended recipient of said files.
As a consequence, there is a need for a method and systems enabling senders of electronic documents and files attached to e-mail to assure, verify and confirm in a non-repudiable manner the delivery of those documents and files to the intended recipients.